Crom's T:V Impressions from GDC

KineticPoet said:
Yeah, that's right. As you'll quickly discover, and as I already suggested, there are all kinds of repurcussions for such a change. We're willing to give it a try because it took me 2 seconds to make the change (we already use this system in single player),
KP
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Yeah I realise that.
Thanks for giving it a go though, I shows you are still willing to experiment somewhat at this stage. :)
I still think it needs to be modified somehow for MP, but with no inside info , I realize that my analysis is about as valuable as a bucket of dead plague rats.

but...here's some suggestions anyway: ;)

Perhaps to avoid a glut of dropped repair patches, you could limit the amount of time they remain in the game world to a very short period? Like only a couple seconds before they dissapear?

Or maybe you could have only people who die with their pack energy bar at full drop rep. patches?
 
I tried to post this last night, but the forum went down right before I hit submit. I haven't read the latest few pages, so maybe I'm repeating something in them..

Thrax Panda said:
R. Fruit,

Think about it (the game design) this way. Tribes 2 mapped just about every key on the keyboard. Even you might admit that is a lot to remember. That's an indication of how overly complex the game was.

One of our goals was to adjust that complexity down to less than half the keyboard but remove as little as possible in doing that.

Now you're going to have to make a leap of faith when I tell you that this is important. That it doesn't matter to hard core players like you, but it does matter to average players. Don't argue that, just accept it for this discussion. If you argue that one point I'll have the pope ban you from life. So, just for this discussion you're going to agree that less complexity is a good thing, particularly when you can achieve it without feature loss.

So we have to cut back a bit, and our unit of measure is going to be the keyboard. That means we have to get keyboard usage down. How do you do that? You start by simplifying what you can. You make similar systems share functionality. You adjust anything mildly redundant. When you've done all that you cut anything you think sucks. Finally, you start looking for features which aren't needed.

When you find something that you think might not be needed, a feature you might want to cut, and it's using a key, that just adds a bit more weight to the cut it decision. It's not enough to make the decision alone (that's important) but it helps.

Thus the repair pack has lost its life, at least for now.
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This is the response I've been waiting for.

I guess if you're trying to cut down on keybinds, the health kit is one of the first things to look at. I personally don't agree that you should do this, but I can't change your mind.

Why not make binding the repair kit optional and use shoddy's idea of the repair kit auto-activating after you lose a certain amount of health(toggleable)? That way new players won't have to worry about the extra key until they get to a point where they want to manage their health kits. If anything, this will cut back on our jerking ;) I really think this is a good compromise.
 
Wulfen said:
I don't think I need to comment.

I'm sure those are all fantastic games, but this is another beast and you know it.
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Thrax said:
:rolleyes:
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This isn't another beast anymore :lol:

Granted I haven't read the entire thread. I may speak in ignorance. You're going to do with the game as you please, it's clear. I'm just going to stop thinking of it as tribes and just call it X product and I'll give me evaluation at beta.

<3
 
KineticPoet said:
Yeah, that's right. As you'll quickly discover, and as I already suggested, there are all kinds of repurcussions for such a change. We're willing to give it a try because it took me 2 seconds to make the change (we already use this system in single player),
KP
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part of it dosent make sense, i took away all your life, but you still had a box of it for some reason that didnt help you, but helps me, thanks for carrying this box around that really did nothing for you.

now if they COULD have used it, that might have helped the person holding it, a physical box they pick up w/ a big + on it that they see, then see it appear on their hud with a key to press

what kind of retard couldnt figure that out, if you are catering the game to someone with that mental capacity, ill pass on T:V
 
The Pumpkin King said:
Well if mid airing and skiing is more fun, then wouldn't T:V be more fun if the less fun stuff like the health kit was all taken out so that the game was filled with more of the really fun stuff like mid-airing and skiing? You say there is no reason for this, I say that making the game more fun is a great reason.

IT DOES look like we disagree here. If articulating my point makes me a jerk then fine, I am. My intention was not to make you angry, but to sway you towards my opinion using examples, points, and reasons. You keep saying the repair kit is so much fun, I'm just waiting to hear how is all. Believe it or not, I WANT to hear your reasons for this, you just won't give me any. I am actually very very curious as to why you think putting more focus on the health kit or targetting laser aspect of the game rather then the skiing and shooting will make the game more fun. I am more then willing to listen. Hook me up with the RegisteredFruit Info... I'm waiting...
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Even KP agreed that the repair kit adds to the game. Go ahead and read his post earlier in the thread and the many other around it if you want reasons. They are all over this thread, but you don't seem to want to read them.

Removing little fun parts does not emphasize the major parts of the game, so your "less is better" argument is moot.

And that part in all caps where I called you a "jerk" (filtered version of female dog) was clearly a joke.
 
Yeah Slogg. Part of the problem in T1/T2 was that there was no physical presence of a rep kit in the game when you killed someone. The rep kit was just "in the body somewhere" not out there making itself known.
I think maybe that is why many people didn't realize that it even existed. There are no obvious visual cues for the rep kit in T1 or T2.
 
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Neek said:
Yeah slogg. Part of the problem in T1/T2 was that there was no physical presence of a rep kit in the game when you killed someone. The rep kit was just "in the body somewhere" not out there making itself known.
I think maybe that is why many people didn't realize that it even existed. There are no visual cues for the rep kit in T1 or T2.
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a physical box w/ a redcross on it would make a lot more sense, i know i played tribes 1 for a year before i knew what a repair kit was (yeah im slow)
 
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the one major concern id seeing with the dropping repair patches is making sure that they arn't to good of a reward, seeing as many people would waste their kit before going into a raped base to clear it out. im sure you've thought of that tho :)
 
sLoGg said:
first off im not slogos, he is a dirty name stealer

secondly exactly, a physical box w/ a redcross on it would make a lot more sense, i know i played tribes 1 for a year before i knew what a repair kit was (yeah im slow)
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errr...sorry, I corrected that. my bad sLoGg.
Anyway, I agree.
The repkit was not counterintuative by nature as the devs seem to be suggesting. It just didn't have enough in the way of visual cues.
 
KineticPoet said:
I'm not going to dwell on this issue since there are plenty of people responding on both sides of the argument. To quickly recap, my original points about repair kits were:

1. They require an extra key. Fact.

2. They're not intuitive to new players, even with an obvious HUD icon on the screen combined with the key you need to press in order to activate it. Supported by focus tests, casual observation, and anecdotal evidence.

3. They give a big advantage to players that know about them and a big disadvantage to players that don't. Fact, and cause for concern given point #2, namely that new players don't tend to know about them.

4. There's a feedback loop because when players who don't know about them die, they give their repair kits to the players that DO know about them. Fact, exacerbating point #3.

I stand by those points and remind you again that these were the conclusions of our team, not just me. My personal opinion as a Tribes player is that I like repair kits. My personal opinion as a general designer is that they're a bit clunky.

So I took 2 seconds last night to make a change that a few people have suggested (it was a change we had already considered making). This is a change for testing purposes only. It's what we do in the single player game.

Each time you kill someone in multiplayer, he drops a repair patch. This requires no extra key or added complexity but still gives you an obvious, intuitive scavenging reward. We can tune this repair patch however we want.

No, it doesn't require skill to use a repair patch, but at least you're rewarded for the skill it took to kill someone. This also adds more value to your life (you might think twice before suiciding in enemy territory). It has lots of other seemingly small repurcussions too (eg. if someone o-snipes defenders then other defenders will get to use the killed defenders' repair patches). We'll see how it goes (reminder: TEST only).

See? Discussion does help. You urged us to try another option. For those who might remember that I promised the same test change for 2-3-4 weapons but never delivered, that's because I went to make the change and realized that our code doesn't fully support it yet. So we're still waiting on that,
KP
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That's kinda reasonable but, heh ... there were just a lot of little dynamics to having the repair kit. For the obvious reasons, to keep your hof/hd alive, to keep you alive in battle (it's the little advantage in dueling when you use yours and your opponent uses his could change the balance of a duel), to save you expended health after a diskjump - this looks to be pretty significant for the T:V light armor life, diskjumping will be useless but what case is there to be made there? that it's already a light and able travel fast etc? The light armor seems it will absolutely be useless in battle it . There's a lot of balance ot be considered in this game, I'm sure you went over it. After playing tribes for 5 + years I can't fathom in my tiny little head how you could balance the game without the RK and without taking away from the dynamic aspects it preserved. I could make a list on the RK but why would I have too? It's your game, I can't wait to witness this X-product :p
 
KineticPoet said:
So I took 2 seconds last night to make a change that a few people have suggested (it was a change we had already considered making). This is a change for testing purposes only. It's what we do in the single player game.

Each time you kill someone in multiplayer, he drops a repair patch. This requires no extra key or added complexity but still gives you an obvious, intuitive scavenging reward. We can tune this repair patch however we want.

No, it doesn't require skill to use a repair patch, but at least you're rewarded for the skill it took to kill someone. This also adds more value to your life (you might think twice before suiciding in enemy territory). It has lots of other seemingly small repurcussions too (eg. if someone o-snipes defenders then other defenders will get to use the killed defenders' repair patches). We'll see how it goes (reminder: TEST only).
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I'm strongly against the patch idea. It sounds a lot like a copy of older fps games. Also, in T1 people never dropped repair kits unless killed extremely fast, but now you are rewarding every kill, even if they are slow and easy. I can see teammates fighting over the patches causing lots of complaining in pubs. If you're thinking of replacing the repair kit with these patches, I regret having argued in this thread and helping push you to this point. The patch will only make the game worse.
 
As for the extra keybind for the rep kit, why not make it part of the selectable inventory, like the mines? If you are doing it for mines, why not do it for rep kits?

The only problem i can see is that you would need a toggle between inventory/deployable items and weapons. Scolling through a bunch of inv items to get to your weapon of choice is really, really, annoying. Especially in the middle of an intense battle. So that really needed to be adressed anyway.
 
Neek said:
As for the extra keybind for the rep kit, why not make it part of the selectable inventory, like the mines? If you are doing it for mines, why not do it for rep kits?

The only problem i can see is that you would need a toggle between inventory/deployable items and weapons. Scolling through a bunch of inv items to get to your weapon of choice is really, really, annoying. Especially in the middle of an intense battle. So that really needed to be adressed anyway.
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That's another reasonable solution. You should still be allowed to bind the health kit to a key, but since they want to clear the keyboard a little bit, they can leave it unbound as default.
 
Also, with these .. "Patches"

The original health kits, there was a reward but there was a randomness to this reward. Either you got blown up to quick to use your kit or you weren't quick enough to use your kit or whatever. Your idea with this style of "repairpatch" will garauntee a reward. I don't know how this will work out in game, it'll obviously aid you, maybe that's not a bad thing. If you take it out though, you lost some original aspects of tribes play. Taking it out, in my opinion, takes away from the game - putting it back in manner you suggest, it changes gameplay but I guess it's better than no kit at all .. I dunno :(

But also, I think taking it out for the fact it's one too many keys is weak. I guess fps shooters should take out prone too because it leaves you slow and helpless and immobile and hell, who uses the prone key?



.
 
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id rather have no repair kit than a guaranteed reward like that, just seems kinda crappy and VERY VERY VERY quake/UT like
 
Thrax Panda said:
Please quote where I said that. Don't bother because you won't be able to. I said that was a contributory issue, not the exclusive issue. The other reasons have been well listed in the thread, so yes, perhaps you should read it before posting knee jerk reactions based on limited information.
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I apologize
 
Our arguments for the repair kit (mine at least) have not been about its reward for killing enemies, but about the strategy of timing when to use it and the ability to pass it to teammates. The repair patch does not address these.

Adding a guaranteed reward for killing an enemy will slow a lot of people down because they'll stop routes to gather kits. I see it causing people to duel more often in CTF, ignoring the flag, just because they want to gather patches for health. In T1, the repair kit was dropped rarely enough that people usually wouldn't go way off course just to run over a dead body.

Again, I believe the solution is to make having a key for the repair kit optional so that newbies don't have to worry about it. Veterans, on the other hand, should be allowed to bind it if they want to manage their kits.
 
I don't think that the Repair Patch drops will be bad as long as the amount of health gained from them is very little. If each corpse that has not already been scavenged drops a Repair Patch, there is a good chance that running over dead bodies will be *too* rewarding, if the amount of health regained is not kept in check.
...but what am I telling you this for? You're testing it out :)
 
KP don't go to the other extreme and give out a guaranteed health bonus for getting a kill.

Either stay with the tried and true repair kit or just stay the course with no kit at all the way you have it planned out.
 
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